Sarah Harte: Men need to partner with women to create political gender equality
Taylor Swift’s past political activity suggests she might endorse Kamala Harris; in 2020 she endorsed Biden. One poll suggests that Swifties agree that an endorsement by the singer would boost a candidate’s campaign. Picture: Yui Mok/PA
I had a dream, and it was that America had a female president. This is not an anti-Trump vision. It’s a shifting-the-needle vision.
What our twenty-third chromosome says about us shouldn’t be part of the story, but we are still at the point where a female leader is a unique event that requires hoopla.
A bird's eye view of some of the week’s news stories is sobering when you consider female progress globally and make the idea of an American female president feel more desirable than ever.
Harris’s election would be a demographic first and a feeling of moving forward.
In Europe, the much-vaunted ideals of equality have taken a bashing. The next European Commission will almost certainly be male-dominated.
Ursula von der Leyen the first female president of the EU executive currently compiling her list of commissioners has seen her goal of a gender-balanced commission evaporate.
Her request to member states to propose two candidates, a man and a woman was roundly ignored including by us.
There is no legal requirement for EU states to nominate a woman but maybe there should be.
Perhaps sex has to be part of the qualification criteria until sex is no longer a hidden disqualification for leadership. Merit can still be a key criterion in selection.
Estimates this week suggest that the gender balance of the commission could plummet from 44% female representation in the last commission to as low as 22%.
Further afield, last week the Taliban introduced new morality rules. There are no words to describe what is happening
to Afghani women.
The erosion of female rights has been underway in the three years since the Taliban returned to power but new laws to “promote virtue and prevent vice” go further.
It wasn’t enough for Afghani women to have to cover their faces and bodies, now “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home will be a moral violation.
Looking at the images of the Taliban male authorities making their fanatical edicts provokes in me a fantasy of rounding them up, shaving off their beards, painting their nails bright pink, and encircling their wrists in friendship bracelets while subjecting them to a radical feminist re-education programme in detention camps.
That goes double for the so-called judges in Iran where women’s rights activists Sharifeh Mohammadi, and Kurdish journalist Pakhshan Azizi have been sentenced to death accused of “armed rebellion” against the regime with verdicts pending for Varisheh Moradi and Nasim Gholami Simiyari.
Since Masoud Pezeshkian became president last month there has been a marked surge in executions with Iranian authorities executing people for their social media posts.
Seventy women are being held prisoner in Evin prison in Tehran as The Islamic Republic is trying to quell a women’s movement in Iran that won’t be silenced.
Men in Iran have also paid a high price for their support of women’s rights with the execution of Reza Rasaei, a Kurdish man who was arrested during the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini.
Protests against his execution by female prisoners resulted in them being violently beaten including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi who reportedly collapsed.
Rasaei’s support shouldn’t be forgotten. One of the main challenges of our era is to make men realise that sexism isn’t just a women’s issue, without alienating them.
Men need to partner with women instead of us being collectively locked inside some endless, deeply exhausting unproductive gender battle.
Avoiding turning men off is presumably why, at the ebullient Democratic National Convention (DNC) last week, Kamala Harris was careful during her speech to ditch gender and identity politics.
She positioned herself as a champion of the middle classes rather than making the fact she could be the first female president a central part of her campaign.
It was a marked switch in tactics when 2016 Hilary Clinton put gender to the fore with the ‘I’m with her’ message.
The presidential race is steeped in gender, but Harris is letting her supporters dog whistle to women voters that she is a female candidate without overtly saying it.
As a man, it’s fine for Trump to lean into strong men tropes, to position himself as a man saving the world from a third world war, to enter the GOP convention to the tune of ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ but the rules are different for women.
So, in the land of the brave and free will the fact Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has a vagina count against her or work in her favour? It depends on which tealeaves you read.
On foot of polling carried out this month by the , they concluded that sexism “is still a powerful force in American politics”.
It’s fatuous to believe that what could politely be called implicit biases won’t disadvantage Harris or to quote Gloria Steinem “a free-floating hostility to women in power that [can’t] be overstated” won’t work against her.
But there is reason to hope. While the Democratic party may have intuited that pushing the woman thing is a bad idea, the data seems to cautiously suggest that it could impact the result at the grassroots level. The question is how much, or will it be enough?
New polls suggest that in six important swing states, 67% of young women who wouldn’t vote for Trump but wouldn’t have voted for Biden either are now believed to be on course to vote for Harris as the candidate of hope and change.
Polls suggest that a larger share of them support Kamala Harris than in any other age and gender group.
Statisticians and pollsters warn of marginal shifts overall but point out that even small shifts could count in a tight election.
Which brings us to Taylor Swift. She didn’t show up at the Democratic Convention as some expected, but speculation is mounting as to whether she will endorse Harris. She has previously encouraged her fans to register to vote.
So far Swift has been silent on the election. Her past political activity suggests she might endorse Harris; in 2020 she endorsed Biden.
One poll suggests that Swifties agree that an endorsement by the singer would boost a candidate’s campaign.
Political analysts have previously cast doubt on whether celebrity endorsements influence elections, but experts in this election seem to agree that anything that adds momentum to either candidate could be influential.
Swift has proven herself to have a stratospherically loyal fanbase. If anyone can get the young female vote out, it would be her.
So come on Taylor, mobilise your army of Swifties. You’ve written the lyrics for a revolution in ‘Change’.
And young women of America your country needs you, the world needs you. Your great-grandmothers got the vote in 1920.
As you stand on their shoulders, on the shoulders of your grandmothers and mothers and of all the women who came before you can make a change, it’s time.
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